Life Snippets #14

It is time, yet again, to purge the stockpile of photos.  It's officially November, which means, last month's file folder has got to go.

Big things happened in October.  Baby got her first haircut.
It left her without a trace of baby showing.

I think The Dad is still traumatized.
As she would tell you, "I'm two and a half."

I made a big ol' vat of Sweet Chili Sauce with peppers from the garden.

Speaking of produce from the garden, my lone regular eggplant, the healthy one that never did anything, finally produced a fruit.

Aint it purdy?

I'll share what I did with it later this week.

My three Japanese Eggplant plants are still producing.

Those things earned their keep this year.

I made this Greek Eggplant Dip with the most recent harvest and it was gooooood.
It also gave me a chance to use up some of the flat-leaf parsley that's going crazy in the garden.

That's feta up on top, but honestly, it didn't even need the cheese.

I know, that came out of my mouth.

Good recipe.

Next up, a glow in the dark eyeball project for the bush out front.

Cheap, fast, easy.

The ping pong balls came from the Dollar Store.

I found the paint at Joann's.

Sharpie for the centers.

I don't they get enough sunlight to glow all that great, but they're still super cute in the daytime.

Also last month, The Girl turned seven.

Her birthday was on a Friday and there was a Fall Carnival at school that night.

So after a couple presents from Mom and Dad, we headed over to that.

Baby had a train wreck of a cold and looked like a hot mess.

The Dad is giving me that, there's-a-camera-in-my-face, look again.

It's impossible for The Kid to not make a face when I want to take his picture.

Rockin' her new kicks.

 The following weekend, we celebrated at home with a Flower Party.

The birthday girl and the neighbor girl.

Tearin' up a burrito.

My niece.

The Kid.

My nephew.

Baby.

Grammy and Grandpa got her a new bike.

She was pretty darned excited about it, but it had been too dang wet to take it out for a spin.
She finally broke it in this weekend.

Present time.
And more proof that I suck at people pictures.

A new game day shirt from The Dad.

Grammy's card.

Cake time.

She was crying right before these photos.

Cousin drama.
That song is stuck in your head now, isn't it?

And last, I would have done a whole post for these, but I forgot to take pictures of them when they were done.

Doh.

I made a couple substitutions, as usual, but they were friggin' delicious.

And the Goat Cheese-Cilantro sauce was on hit.

You like how my ghetto came out right there?

Vegetarian Lentil & Sweet Potato Empanadas

Just as a note, I think my potato was a yam, not a sweet potato, not that it matters.

The lentils I had in the cupboard turned out to be split peas.

I didn't feel like going to the store, so I used them, but they took way longer to cook and needed more liquid added periodically.

Also, instead of puff pastry, I made another batch of that easy stand mixer pie crust.

Empanadas are soooo good and easily adaptable.

This is a great vegetarian one to start out with.

The Chorizo Empanadas that I make all the time are amazing, too.

Annnnd, you can use the soy chorizo for those of you want to keep it vegetarian.

That stuff is goooooood.

Add some diced potatoes if ya want, too.

I didn't mean to talk that much right there.

I get excited about hand pies.

Here they are comin' together at my house:

No pictures of the sauce either, dang it.

Oh well, you get the idea.

So that was a lot of photo purging.

And rambling.

So I'll go now, but before I do, I want to say happy birthday to The Dad.

He had a birthday six days after The Girl.

We had a newborn at home for his 40th.

I'll let you do the math.  :)

Pictures from his birthday shindig to come.

And that concludes another one of these random posts.